Blind but for the Rain
by Keo Siph
Summary: A final confrontation, a final exchange of broken pieces of the puzzle. Kagome loses herself, and Naraku finds the pain of not taking a deep breath before the plunge.


**Blind but for the Rain**

* * *

-Summary- 

-A final confrontation, a final exchange of broken pieces of the puzzle. Kagome loses herself, and Naraku finds the pain of not taking a deep breath before the plunge.-

* * *

9-2-05 at 2:03 in the morning 

Inu Yasha © Rumiko Takahashi

By Keo Siph

* * *

"There! There!" Kagome cried, racing just ahead of Inu Yasha, Miroku, Sango, and Shippo. She tripped into the clearing and stuttered to a halt, her feet dripping in the wet of the jungle. Miroku caught her shoulder to stop himself as Inu Yasha blared past into the field. 

Towards the waiting Naraku.

Miroku ripped at his beads and Sango flew after Inu Yasha as the sky cleared and shed brightness upon the scene of the mutant demon, forming and reforming and pulsing. What they usually saw, the human appendage of the demon mass, was half-protruding from it, gasping for breath against the grass.

Their chance. Their chance.

One crimson orb swiveled up to the swinging wind and the closest tentacle snarled out and dangled a boy in front of the half demon.

Everyone stopped moving, save for Naraku's gasping heaves.

"Eye for an eye. I have two innocent lives, I need new flesh. Give me a reason to forsake these."

Inu Yasha hardly breathed.

"I don't want to fuse with more human …" he paused to gasp, " flesh, but my options are low."

Sango was transfixed, before she turned and ripped into her carrying pouch.

"Fangs, a full set, from an old badger demon. Potent."

His snarled reply was more than enough and she flung the bag into his face in time to catch Kohaku. She shuddered, then fell still, clutching vigorously at her only kin, fingers skittering up and down his shoulder. Clouds seemed to rain light upon the tableau in spatters, the small rips of shadow gliding effortlessly past her harshly drawn tears.

A painfully twitching strand of the mass lifted the bag away and dissolved hopelessly into the shadows.

"Another."

"Like Hell you!" Inu Yasha's voice snagged on his words as he dived headlong into Naraku's midriff with his sword. Only a thick tangle of limbs and demon parts stopped him, lending his momentum a new direction on the other side of the grassy expanse. He turned and screamed as he ripped across the distance, shortening it hastily.

* * *

Koga's ears twitched. He looked over one shoulder as Ginta and Hakkaku nibbled on their burnt pork as they trundled into the forest. 

"Hm? Leader?"

"They found him. Stole my idea."

"Mmmhm. Mmmhm."

"Hm! Hmmmm!"

Koga turned slowly, eyes narrowed.

"What are you doing?"

"Finishing our food!"

"Naraku's not worth good pork." Koga's pause was all the encouragement they needed.

"Right! That's right! We have to finish what we're eating!"

"It's still tender in the middle, so all charcoal's worth it!"

* * *

Shessomeru turned around one tree, stepped over the roots, and began in his new direction. 

"Lord Shessomeru?"

"Inu Yasha was lucky enough to find him first."

"Lord Shessomeru! Lord Shessomeru!" Jaken whined, tripping over the waist-high roots, "Wait for me!"

"Lord Shessomeru!" Rin called, singing some rendinition of Jaken's voice. "Lo-rd Shess-ssom-er-u!"

The tall demon just kept walking.

* * *

He was cold. Unearthly cold. Sango shuddered and scooped him even closer. She couldn't feel his breath, his heartbeat, his pulse, nothing. Nothing. His silence, his inability to be louder than the air whistling against her ears was drowning her.

* * *

Kagome drew an arrow and notched her bow. Shippo turned in time to find hordes of small demons the size of squirrels, insect and mammilia and bird alike. He started to cut them down, one by one. Inu Yasha skidded a few feet, uprooting a patch of flowers, then scarred the very air with his father's fang. Kagome leveled her eye along the shaft. A pair of wolf paws pounded the forest floor. A full-blooded demon casually drifted closer.

* * *

Sango felt frost etching itself along the marrow of her bones. 

To Miroku, each of her shudders felt like earth shattering stroked of ice in his own spine.

* * *

"Eat dirt, Naraku!" Koga cried, sailing through the white-washed summer air in a blaze of brown glory. Inu Yasha stumbled through his Wind Scar and whipped around. 

"What's wrong with you!" The dog's voice barely carried to Koga as he landed on a random, outstretched wing of Naraku, gripping the leathery surface and slashing out with his shard-laden leg. The mass writhed away from him and the human part snarled. A feathered arrow embedded itself and quivered, sinking slowly into the pitch. The body did it's best to scratch at it, but the spider's legs near it could only brake it off nearer and nearer to the skin. Koga darted towards opportunity and landed a kick in the wound. Naraku screeched, flailing a dragon-sized paw through the air against Koga's skull, sending him into a nearby tree. Inu Yasha's wind seared through said appendage, leaving it twitching on the ground and enough blood pouring down Naraku's flank to almost blind him. Attached as he was, his human arms could hardly move him and his gasps became coughs and hacking breaths. Kagome notched another arrow.

* * *

She'll shatter, he thought. I can't touch her, Sango'll shatter and those pieces will melt and I can't put her back together again.

* * *

A set of centipede legs ripped through red cloth and caught skin, whipping Inu Yasha out of his chosen path and into the ground beside Naraku, where he proceeded to drive leg after leg into the ground in attempts to impale. Inu Yasha was on his feet quick enough, but large gashes succeeded in appearing down the length of his back as he fell out of range. 

Kagome aimed for the monstrosity's head. Dark rivers of hair and blood masked his features, but she would have bet anything on tortured and hopeful as he spoke.

"One…"

* * *

That was all she needed. It felt as though the world had been cut off, the large, iron gates dropped and bolted in place inside her head. There was nothing more coming in, nor any more going out. All that she heard was her own voice, and distant echoes of it. 

She stepped forward, her fingers slipping.

And innocent life… spared… something small… anything… anything… what… worth… worth… worth… worth… worth… something.

She stumbled and fell, but let it fuel her forward motion and her hands to work getting herself on a running start. The instant she had her hands in the grass her other foot was ready and she sprinted off, stumbling and tripping and falling in and out of her straight line.

Anything was worth an innocent life.

* * *

Miroku had just reached out with his hand when Inu Yasha, and then a flying centipede arm, flew by and he spun, one arm still in place, eyes flickering across the scene in an instant. 

"Go, Kagome's being rash again." Miroku stared at Sango for the longest moment, then finally his head shot up and saw her reach him.

Kagome made it to Naraku, kneeled by his head and was speaking rushed tones.

Miroku could only handle widening his eyes and taking in more of the scene, his sight flickering and body wobbling.

"Go," said Sango.

So he went.

* * *

"I'll guide your arm. Just get a strong one, okay?" Kagome's voice was almost washed away in the rushing noise of the river of carnage, but Naraku just nodded, starring out distantly with eyes crusted under the trickling streams. He could feel her fingers brush the golem arm he chose, settle it against flesh, although he hadn't recognized it as her shoulder. 

"Dive, and grab the first life you feel. Release the innocent." He nodded into her hand, and dove.

* * *

Kagome! His mind cried out. Kagome! But his breath couldn't, because he didn't have enough to fill for No! or Stop! The word "Kagome" was out of the question. 

But he thought it at her in the strongest wave he'd ever had to think.

He heard Inu Yasha shuffling, heard him grumbling that he couldn't see for the blood.

He wouldn't see.

Miroku clambered across the sea of green, mentally crying that he had never stumbled this much up rocky terrain why now, why in this perfect hillside… he watched his feet as they crossed the threshold from dirt and grit to puddles of pooling blood.

Amazing, the amount he was loosing, this man.

Miroku dared a look, and regretted.

A gaping hole had been blown in the side of Naraku, where his right hip met true demon flesh, and there sat a man with brown hair and a perfectly stolen face doused in blood, barely breathing. However….

Kagome stood now, having come to her feet in the last instant, her fingers clasping the rough elbow of Naraku, her head turned up to the sky which had long ago forsaken the patches of sun, her hair effortlessly framing her crystal-clear eyes.

The mist would not set in that crystal for a good few minutes, but it was already decided. Her head just had to realize the truth. That Naraku had ripped through flesh, lacerated bone and found what would beat beyond eternity.

Kikyo's empowered heart, and Kagome's most used organ.

It still beat in his hand.

The rain dribbled then, not yet even.

That little addition to the scene, that one little change, shed the blood from Naraku's eyes so that he did not stare sightlessly. Too late, the ever-present rain came.

Both men were speechless.

* * *

Shessomeru sniffed once, then held up a delicately fingered hand. Rin stopped short of her next hop, poised just as delicately on her toe as Shessomeru might ever hope to be, and stared. Jaken ran right into her. 

"Now, what's the cause for stopping, HM? We should be following in Lord Shessomeru's every footstep…?"

"Rin, stay, Jaken, keep following." And Shessomeru began his descent into the last shadows before a vast clearing that lay before them.

* * *

Naraku stared, then sharp eyes snatched a sight of Miroku and he viscously tore his arm from her chest. The vial of shards had splintered, leaving glass and pink all through the grass. She fell into the pool of shards. 

"Foolish girl." A dark, dog-shaped head of five red eyes unevenly distributed swallowed the still-beating heart, and the mass began forming pulselessly again, swirling again and again in one direction, colors of such mahogany and crimson and cobalt that it may not have been demon at all, but a new moon reflecting off a cerulean ocean in the last moments before dawn struck.

Miroku clattered to his knees as his ringing staff made the sounds of his breaking innards. Hands twitched uselessly in their monk garb, beads chattered against one another, and his eyes shuddered over the scene.

"Hey, monk," Inu Yasha half-snarled, roughly punching Miroku's shoulder. "I'm seein' two shades of red, so you'll have to direct me."

"Yeah… Yeah. See that dark hump?"

"HmmHm. Yep."

"Dive."

* * *

Clamoring feet, tired legs, jewel shards falling in your hands…Koga gasped against the tree that broke his free-flight, and a hand fell on his shoulder. A cold, well-kept hand. 

"Stay there. You don't want to see this battle." And the coldness was gone, stealing away all his warmth like a princess away with a bandit thief. Koga shivered to himself.

"Never thought I'd see the day I'd call 'heat' a princess and that all-mighty dog of a demon a 'bandit'."

* * *

Seventy-two pounds of leaden boy dropped into Miroku's arms and he jolted awake. 

"I'm going to get the innocent thing."

"You know who that is!"

"Kagome's little lost kitten, brought in from the rain. Yep. Knew we'd end it all cleaning up after her." Sango set out, a slow gait with one hand clutching her other elbow, one hand limp at her side. Miroku clutched her brother closer, wishing that would bring her closer, too. "Too bad it's still raining. She might have waited 'til it cleared up."

* * *

The sea of pitch spilled over again as Inu Yasha ripped up one side, only to find the hole grow bigger from someone else. 

"Miroku?"

"Shessomeru. You really must be blind. And deaf."

"You've heard this guy's wailing. I've been listening to it for over half an hour."

"…"

"Hm?"

"Stay blind, blood-kin. We'll finish our bout another day."

"Yeah, good ta know you're the honorable type."

"And you are an insufferable, incurable, lost cause of a moronic half-breed mutt."

"Wow. That must have hurt. Not used to stringing words together, what with that hermit life you live."

"Those are benefits you may come to enjoy."

* * *

"Tell me his weakness. We both want him dead." Sango's voice wafted through Muso's head, settling in Onigumo's brain. He winced from her and turned away. A claw of a hand caught his jaw and whipped his head back around. 

"Now."

* * *

**His eyes… his heart could dictate, his brain comprehend, but his eyes… drew it all together, the magnetic center of his world.**

**He saw Kikyo, and that vision had drudged him through it all. Pain, torment…**

**Becoming a demon.**

**Rip out both eyes. Two eyes. Not these fake ones, but his real, old ones. The ones attached to his original face, kept somewhere deep inside…**

Or, so Muso spoke.

* * *

Naraku rippled with the tar excretion, as he was beginning to fall away. 

"Now!" cried Inu Yasha, feet flailing him forward into the seeming abyss.

"Now!" Koga snarled, rushing forward, even as dizziness overtook him.

"Now!" "Now!" Ginta and Hakkaku screamed in unison.

"Now! Onigumo hissed.

"Now!" Sango replied, almost jumping to her feet.

But Kagome beat her to it, and jumped into the heaving mass.

* * *

"She… her heart was ripped out! You could see her ribs!" 

"What the hell are you talking about!"

"She was dead! Kagome was dead! But she just jumped up!"

"Dead! She couldn't be! She—she was just up! I saw her! Why else would I stop?"

* * *

"Girl…" said Naraku, but this was his moment of helplessness. Any wounds he received now, would be scars forever… 

But he had the heart of Kikyo herself.

"Why?"

"Because I can."

What was a single gi—

A blood-curdling howl cleaved the air off the ground, out of the ears of those in the clearing, shook the trees.

Naraku writhed, and in the tidal wave of blood that slipped away from its form, a single eye rolled to a stop in front of him. Kagome stood above it, casting a shadow across his wry form. The scar of a spider was visible now, ragged and ugly and as new. His strong, handsome fingers clutched at his gorged face, his body convulsing with the effort of holding what was left of him together.

One more eye dropped and bounced next to the first. Naraku's one good eye stared, then followed it's path up to Kagome, her chest bloody but healing, heart beating behind unbroken ribs and being covered by quickly growing flesh, jewel shards imbedded in her side.

A wash of growing blood cascading down her cheek and arm.

"Two eyes, and you're power is gone."

Sango still held Onigumo, who dared not breathe. Miroku's warm, heart-breaking arms held the cold, chilled body of Kohaku, Koga's head was being treated by Rin, Jaken's staff stolen by Gista and Hakkaku, Shessomeru handing Inu Yasha cloth after miraculous white cloth in an attempt to let him regain his sight, but Kagome stood with Naraku at her feet.

Breathing, living, loving, talking Kago—

"KAGOME!" Shippo cried, launching himself at her shoulder and holding on for dear life. "Youyouyouyouyou….!"

She reached down and plucked a final shard from Naraku's hair, tapping the two eyes into his hands.

"Fair trade?"

Naraku made his way to his now human knees, cupped hands delicately lofting the two orbs of gore, before he placed one to his empty socket, paused, and placed it against the still connected eye. He held it a moment longer before dropping it back into his cupped and embracing it.

"Where it belongs."

-Fin-


End file.
